State, county offices to close for Confederate Memorial Day

Ricky McClain, city cemetery superintendent, and Craig Callaham, foreman, look over the W.W. Humphreys gravesite at Old Silver Brook Cemetery in Anderson. A local chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy will have a 6 p.m. ceremony at the grave on Friday.

South Carolina government offices and county offices — including those in Anderson, Oconee and Pickens — will be shutting down Friday for Confederate Memorial Day.

All five school districts in Anderson County and the district in Oconee County will remain open to complete standardized PASS testing. Pickens County schools will be open but have already finished the testing.

Clemson University and Tri-County Technical College will have graduation ceremonies Friday.

Georgia had its Confederate Memorial Day on April 26. There are nine state that formally honor Confederate Memorial Day, or a similar holiday, on dates ranging from January to June.

North Carolina also honors May 10 as Confederate Memorial Day.

The holiday helps highlight the role that South Carolina and the Upstate had in the Civil War, said Anita Donnely, a member of the Emmala Reed Miller 2694 branch of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

"I think a lot of people don't realize just how much impact Anderson had on the Civil War," she said. "We want people to remember the history of the day. It's not a hate holiday at all. It is just to remember the soldiers who died and for us to remember the history of it."

The Sons of Confederate Veterans Palmetto Sharpshooters Camp 1428 and the Emmala Reed Miller Daughters of the Confederacy will be working together for two memorial events for the same man.

William Wirt Humphreys was a major in the war and later became mayor of Anderson. He died at the age of 56 in 1893.

His likeness — not, as many believe, that of Manse Jolly — stands firmly atop the city's Confederate memorial in downtown Anderson, Donley said. Jolly was a Confederate officer from Anderson, noted for his post-war pledge to kill five Yankees for each one of his five slain brothers.

Humphreys' grave marker, a large headstone, sits in the Old Silverbrook Cemetery. The grave will be rededicated at 6 p.m. Friday in honor of Humphrey's military service and his role in the growth of the city and county of Anderson, Donley said.

An 11 a.m. ceremony Saturday will recognize and rededicate the downtown monument, a marble spire that is topped with a marble likeness of Humphreys.

The monument took about 16 years of fundraising, including sales of cookbooks and opera tickets, before it was constructed.